The Integrated Security Fund (ISF) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) operates in one of the most complex conflict-affected regions of the world. The ISF is designed to provide strategic UK investments that combine a whole-of-government approach to catalyse conflict prevention, stabilisation and peacebuilding.
Since 2017, we have been partnering with the ISF MENA teams to provide monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) services to support evidence-informed programming and policy decisions.
Our Role
Making evidence-informed policy and programme decisions in fragile and conflict settings can be challenging and high-risk given the many contextual, institutional and programmatic considerations and sensitivities.
Alongside our partners Altai Consulting and Integrated International, we work closely with ISF teams to build their capacity to better generate, analyse and learn from evidence. We design and deliver monitoring and evaluation activities that can access hard-to-reach areas, from community peacebuilding, strategic communications to security programmes.
Across the MENA region, we support ISF teams to monitor and track the value of ISF investments, their political access and influence (PAI), and the extent to which programmes are addressing cross-cutting topics including:
- gender equality and social inclusion (GESI)
- conflict sensitivity (CS)
- climate sensitivity
Our Methods and Approaches
We offer ISF programme teams — and their implementing partners — MEL support across all phases of the programme/project cycle. This includes:
- MEL systems support
- monitoring and outcome verification
- evaluation and research
- learning
We support ISF MENA teams to develop integrated country and regional MEL systems that generate relevant, timely and proportionate evidence to inform decisions around design, delivery and adaptation.
We improve how teams track and report on outcome progress and support them to build an evidence base of what works, where and why in conflict, stability and security programming across the ISF MENA Portfolio.
Outcomes and impact
Over three consecutive contracts, we have supported ISF teams in the Middle East (and subsequently North Africa too) through turbulent and challenging years in the region.
Our efforts have contributed to an improved evidence base and better learning on what works and why in priority areas of UK investment across the MENA region, including on security, stabilisation and policing programming.
We have helped increase MEL capability across the region and have developed innovative MEL tools and approaches, frameworks and toolkits to continuously support teams to make evidence-informed policy and programme decisions. This includes:
- rolling out an approach for developing robust outcome-focused change stories
- delivering an interactive programme of learning and training sessions covering MEL fundamentals as well as more advanced MEL topics to build ISF capability, on topics ranging from progress markers to integrating climate sensitivities into programming
- institutionalising integrated MEL frameworks and reporting templates for ISF Programme teams and their implementing partners, helping to align reporting and easily extract key outcome achievements
- developing a suite of interactive toolkits and guidance notes to support ISF teams to lead on cross-cutting issues, setting the expectations with partners and ensuring compliance and supporting best practice approaches
- running internal learning sessions and Pause and Reflect sessions between ISF teams and their IPs
